Unsung Hero
Under 500 Employees
Recognizes an early professional from a small-to-mid-sized company who is making bold contributions and showing strong leadership potential.
Alison Simonson
Dyce Games
VP
-Product Development: Alison is a key member of our Development team, identifying great new games and making them the best they can be. From concept to final product on retail shelves, Alison's fingerprints are on our games every step of the way.
-Pitching Excellence: our business has grown rapidly thanks to Alison's amazing connection with buyers and enthusiasm when demonstrating our games. She forges lasting relationships with our partners.
-Inventor Relations: Alison has identified a number of amazing games from outside inventors and brought them to the Dyce executive team for inclusion in our development pipeline.
Ann Wong
YuMe Toys
COO
As COO of YuMe Toys, Ann Wong has driven operational transformation to meet the demands of today’s fast-moving collectibles market. First, she led the shift from a traditional promotional model to a drop-driven, collectible cadence, supported by tighter global calendar planning—unlocking more frequent retail touchpoints and stronger sell-through. Second, drawing on her promotions background, she infused YuMe with a customer-centric, campaign-driven mindset, integrating licensing, product development and supply chain to enable simultaneous global launches. Third, she introduced KPI dashboards, vendor scorecards and structured gate reviews, alongside a “second life” strategy, improving speed-to-market, maximizing ROI and accelerating global growth.
Ashton Fender
Licensing International
Director, Events & Engagement
Director of Events & Engagement at Licensing International, Ashton Fender is the driving force behind the organization’s most critical industry touchpoints that connect the licensing industry at large. She leads the execution of summits, bringing together global professionals to exchange insights and strengthen partnerships. Ashton also independently oversees Licensing International’s Excellence Awards, a global awards program celebrating industry achievement. Known for consistently going above and beyond, Ashton also fills operational gaps and support roles throughout the global organization to achieve cross-functional success. Her leadership ensures seamless execution across complex initiatives, directly contributing to Licensing International’s reputation for high-quality, high-impact programming.
Emily Chaput
Sunny Days Entertainment
Marketing Director
Emily joined as the company’s first marketing hire and, over eight years, rose to Marketing Director, now leading a team of six. At a company that has grown into a Top 20 toy company in just 13 years, she built the marketing function from the ground up. She helped develop top-performing brands including Woof & Co, nominated for TOTY 25', and Squeeezy, a viral success at Target. She also founded the South Carolina chapter of Women in Toys, connecting and empowering women across the industry. Emily consistently turns trends into scalable growth, positioning the company as a leader.
Loren Mitchell
Basic Fun!
Sr. Director, Content and Social Media
Recognizing a critical breakdown in cross-functional collaboration, she architected a comprehensive e-commerce and content workflow connecting Sales, Brand Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Studio teams. Her "Asset Tracker" eliminated redundant work, reduced delays, and elevated quality. She also transformed how the company requests ads and social content — shifting from fragmented, one-off requests to cohesive, campaign-minded planning ensuring every asset feels intentional and brand-unified. The result is a synchronized creative pipeline that has elevated the company's online presence, producing high-level content that rivals major industry brands.
Ruby Lam
CrunchLabs
Sr. Director of Global Supply Chain and International Growth
Ruby built and scaled CrunchLabs’ supply chain to support both U.S. and international markets, establishing a foundation for sustained growth. She took a forward-looking approach to global sourcing, onboarding factory partners across two new countries within four years of launch to increase resilience and flexibility. Equally important, Ruby invested in her team, creating opportunities for growth, promoting three team leads and strengthening operations in the Philippines. Through thoughtful planning and people-first leadership, she has quietly enabled the business to scale, ensuring operational excellence behind the scenes and positioning CrunchLabs for continued global expansion.
Stefani David
Entertainment Earth
Director of Operations
Stefani leads multiple teams with a rare combination of warmth and vision, consistently elevating both morale and performance. When team dynamics are strained, she steps in with compassion and clarity — turning difficult moments into opportunities for growth. She has built an environment where people feel genuinely valued, which directly translates to stronger collaboration and results. Perhaps most notably, she does this work quietly and without fanfare — embodying the spirit of an unsung hero. Her influence is felt across departments, yet she rarely seeks recognition for the culture she so deliberately builds every day.
Tina Patel
Playmates Toys, Inc.
VP, Finance
Tina co-founded and led the digital & operational transformation of a Top 20 India based promotional products supplier, replacing outdated, paper-based systems with a streamlined, scalable infrastructure, reducing overhead & unlocking new revenue streams. She pioneered data & graphic workflows that disrupted the industry, scaling the business to 1,000 employees and laying the foundation a 6,000+ global workforce. At Playmates, she has strengthened financial discipline and cross-functional trust, elevating finance into a strategic growth driver while setting a new standard for leadership first female VP of Finance in the company's history.
Tobi Karson-Sevdalakis
Relatable
VP, People
As a team of one until recently, Tobi quietly built the people infrastructure that powers Relatable's growth. She transformed onboarding from a 42% to 89% employee approval rating, introduced an on-demand recruitment model that cut agency fees by 63% and reduced time-to-fill by 23%, and implemented the Predictive Index tool to hire smarter and build stronger teams. She led compensation benchmarking, career-pathing, and succession planning across the entire company, bringing structure, compliance, and strategic workforce planning to a fast-scaling company without ever losing the culture, spirit, or spark that makes Relatable special.
